Twelve Men

TWELVE MEN

The other stared. “Well,” he commented to me after a time, walking and twisting, “if a man wants to come here I suppose he has to put up with such things, but it’s certainly unusual, isn’t it?” He sat down, wilted, and waited.

Later a clerk in charge of the registry book took us in hand, and then I heard him explaining that his lungs were not in good shape. He had come a long way – Denver, I believe. He had heard that all one needed to do was to wire, especially one in his circumstances.

“Some people think that way,” solemnly commented the clerk, “but they don’t know Mr. Culhane. He does about as he pleases in these matters. He doesn’t do this any more to make money but rather to amuse himself, I think. He always has more applicants than he accepts.”

I began to see a light. Perhaps there was something to this place after all. I did not even partially sense the drift of the situation, though, until bedtime when, after having been served a very frugal meal and shown to my very simple room, a kind of cell, promptly at nine o’clock lights were turned off. I lit a small candle and was looking over some things which I had placed in a grip, when I heard a voice in the hall outside: “Candles out, please! Candles out! All guests in bed!” Then it came to me that a very rigorous régime was being enforced here.

The next morning as I was still soundly sleeping at fivethirty a loud rap sounded at my door. The night before I had noticed above my bed a framed sign which read: “Guests must be dressed in running trunks, shoes and sweater, and appear in the gymnasium by six sharp.” “Gymnasium at six! Gymnasium at six!” a voice echoed down the hall. I bounced out of bed. Something about the very air of the place made me feel

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that it was dangerous to attempt to trifle with the routine here. The tiger-like eyes of my host did not appeal to me as retaining any softer ray in them for me than for others. I had paid my six hundred ... I had better earn it. I was down in the great room in my trunks, sweater, dressing-gown, running shoes in less than five minutes.

And that room! By that time as odd a company of people as I have ever seen in a gymnasium had already begun to assemble. The leanness! the osseosity! the grandiloquent whiskers parted in the middle! the mustachios! the goatees! the fat, Hoti-like stomachs! the protuberant knees! the thin arms! the bald or semi-bald pates! the spectacles or horn glasses or pince-nezes! – laid aside a few moments later, as the exercises began. Youth and strength in the pink of condition, when clad only in trunks, a sweater and running shoes, are none too acceptable – but middle age! And out in the world, I reflected rather sadly, they all wore the best of clothes, had their cars, servants, city and country houses perhaps, their factories, employees, institutions. Ridiculous! Pitiful! As lymphatic and flabby as oysters without their shells, myself included. It was really painful.

Even as I meditated, however, I was advised, by many who saw that I was a stranger, to choose a partner, any partner, for medicine ball practice, for it might save me being taken or called by him. I hastened so to do. Even as we were assembling or beginning to practice, keeping two or three light medicine balls going between each pair, our host entered – that iron man, that mount of brawn. In his cowled dressing-gown he looked more like some great monk or fighting abbot of the medieval years than a trainer. He walked to the center, hung

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up his cowl and revealed himself lithe and lion-like and costumed like ourselves. But how much more attractive as he strode about, his legs lean and sturdy, his chest full, his arms powerful and graceful! At once he seized a large leather-cov- ered medicine ball, as had all the others, and calling a name to which responded a lean whiskerando with a semi-bald pate, thin legs and arms, and very much caricatured, I presume, by the wearing of trunks and sweater. Taking his place opposite the host, he was immediately made the recipient of a volley of balls and brow-beating epithets.

“Hurry up now! Faster! Ah, come on! Put the ball back to me! Put the ball back! Do you want to keep it all day? Great God! What are you standing there for? What are you standing there for? What do you think you’re doing – drinking tea? Come on! I haven’t all morning for you alone. Move! Move, you ham! You call yourself an editor! Why, you couldn’t edit a handbill! You can’t even throw a ball straight! Throw it straight! Throw it straight! For Christ’s sake where do you think I am – out in the office? Throw it straight! Hell!” and all the time one and another ball, grabbed from anywhere, for the floor was always littered with them, would be thrown in the victim’s direction, and before he could well appreciate what was happening to him he was being struck, once in the neck and again on the chest by the rapidly delivered six ounce air-filled balls, two of which at least he and the host were supposed to keep in constant motion between them. Later, a ball striking him in the stomach, he emitted a weak “Ooph!” and laying his hands over the affected part ceased all effort. At this the master of the situation only smirked on him leoninely and holding up a ball as if to throw it continued, “What’s the matter with you now?

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Come on! What do you want to stop for? What do you want to stand there for? You’re not hurt. How do you expect to get anywhere if you can’t keep two silly little balls like these going between us?” (There had probably been six or eight.) “Here I am sixty and you’re forty, and you can’t even keep up with me. And you pretend to give the general public advice on life! Well, go on; God pity the public, is all I say,” and he dismissed him, calling out another name.

Now came a fat, bald soul, with dewlaps and a protruding stomach, who later I learned was a manufacturer of clothing – six hundred employees under him – down in health and nerves, really all “shot to pieces” physically. Plainly nervous at the sound of his name, he puffed quickly into position, grabbing wildly after the purposely eccentric throws which his host made and which kept him running to left and right in an all but panicky mood.

“Move! Move!” insisted our host as before, and, if anything, more irritably. “Say, you work like a crab! What a motion! If you had more head and less guts you could do this better. A fine specimen you are! This is what comes of riding about in taxis and eating midnight suppers instead of exercising. Wake up! Wake up! A belt would have kept your stomach in long ago. A little less food and less sleep, and you wouldn’t have any fat cheeks. Even your hair might stay on! Wake up! Wake up! What do you want to do – die?” and as he talked he pitched the balls so quickly that his victim looked at times as though he were about to weep. His physical deficiencies were all too plain in every way. He was generally obese and looked as though he might drop, his face a flaming red, his hands trembling and missing, when a “Well, go on,” sounded and a third victim was

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called. This time it was a well-known actor who responded, a star, rather spry and well set up, but still nervous, for he realized quite well what was before him. He had been here for weeks and was in pretty fair trim, but still he was plainly on edge. He ran and began receiving and tossing as swiftly as he could, but as with the others so it was his turn now to be given such a grilling and tongue-lashing as falls to few of us in this world, let alone among the successful in the realm of the footlights. “Say, you’re not an actor – you’re a woman! You’re a stewed onion! Move! Move! Come on! Come on! Look at those motions now, will you? Look at that one arm up! Where do you suppose the ball is? On the ceiling? It’s not a lamp! Come on! Come on! It’s a wonder when you’re killed as Hamlet that you don’t stay dead. You are. You’re really dead now, you know. Move! Move!” and so it would go until finally the poor thespian, no match for his master and beset by flying balls, landing upon his neck, ear, stomach, finally gave up and cried:

“Well, I can’t go any faster than I can, can I? I can’t do any more than I can!”

“Ah, go on! Go back into the chorus!” called his host, who now abandoned him. “Get somebody from the baby class to play marbles with you,” and he called another.

By now, as may well be imagined, I was fairly stirred up as to the probabilities of the situation. He might call me! The man who was playing opposite me – a small, decayed person who chose me, I think, because he knew I was new, innocuous and probably awkward – seemed to realize my thoughts as well as his own. By lively exercise with me he was doing his utmost to create an impression of great and valuable effort here. “Come on, let’s play fast so he won’t notice us,” he said

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most pathetically at one point. You would have thought I had known him all my life.

But he didn’t call us – not this morning at any rate. Whether owing to our efforts or the fact that I at least was too insignificant, too obscure, we escaped. He did reach me, however, on the fourth or fifth day, and no spindling failure could have done worse. I was struck and tripped and pounded until I all but fell prone upon the floor, half convinced that I was being killed, but I was not. I was merely sent stumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while he tortured some one else. But the names he called me! The comments on my none too smoothly articulated bones – and my alleged mind! As in my schooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolent atmosphere in which I was taught my ABC’s, I crept shamefacedly and beaten from the scene.

It was in the adjoining bathroom, where the host daily personally superintended the ablutions of his guests, that even more of his remarkable method was revealed. Here a goodly portion of the force of his method was his skill in removing any sense of ability, agility, authority or worth from those with whom he dealt. Apparently to him, in his strength and energy, they were all children, weaklings, failures, numbskulls, no matter what they might be in the world outside. They had no understanding of the most important of their possessions, their bodies. And here again, even more than in the gymnasium, they were at the disadvantage of feeling themselves spectacles, for here they were naked. However grand an osseous, leathery lawyer or judge or doctor or politician or society man may look out in the world addressing a jury or a crowd or walking in some favorite place, glistening in his raiment, here,

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whiskered, thin of legs, arms and neck, with bulging brow and stripped not only of his gown but everything else this side of his skin – well, draw your own conclusion. For after performing certain additional exercises – one hundred times up on your toes, one hundred times (if you could) squatting to your knees, one hundred times throwing your arms out straight before you from your chest or up from your shoulders or out at right angles, right and left from your body and back to your hips until your fingers touched and the sweat once more ran – you were then ready to be told (for once in your life) how to swiftly and agilely take a bath.

“Well, now, you’re ready, are you?” this to a noble jurist who, like myself perhaps, had arrived only the day before. “Come on, now. Now you have just ten seconds in which to jump under the water and get yourself wet all over, twenty seconds in which to jump out and soap yourself thoroughly, ten seconds in which to get back in again and rinse off all the soap, and twenty seconds in which to rub and dry your skin thoroughly – now start!”

The distinguished jurist began, but instead of following the advice given him for rapid action huddled himself in a shivering position under the water and stood all but inert despite the previous explanation of the host that the sole method of escaping the weakening influence of cold water was by counteracting it with activity, when it would prove beneficial.

He was such a noble, stalky, bony affair, his gold eyeglasses laid aside for the time being, his tweeds and carefully laundered linen all dispensed with during his stay here. As he came, meticulously and gingerly and quite undone by his efforts, from under the water, where he had been most roughly urged

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by Culhane, I hoped that he and not I would continue to be seized upon by this savage who seemed to take infinite delight in disturbing the social and intellectual poise of us all.

“Soap yourself!” exclaimed the latter most harshly now that the bather was out in the room once more. “Soap your chest! Soap your stomach! Soap your arms, damn it! Soap your arms! And don’t rub them all day either! Now soap your legs, damn it! Soap your legs! Don’t you know how to soap your legs! Don’t stand there all day! Soap your legs! Now turn round and soap your back – soap your back! For Christ’s sake, soap your back! Do it quick – quick! Now come back under the water again and see if you can get it off. Don’t act as though you were cold molasses! Move! Move! Lord, you act as though you had all day – as though you had never taken a bath in your life! I never saw such an old poke. You come up here and expect me to do some things for you, and then you stand around as though you were made of bone! Quick now, move!”

The noble jurist did as demanded – that is, as quickly as he could – only the mental inadequacy and feebleness which he displayed before all the others, of course, was the worst of his cruel treatment here, and in this as in many instances it cut deep. So often it was the shock to one’s dignity more than anything else which hurt so, to be called an old poke when one was perhaps a grave and reverent senior, or to be told that one was made of bone when one was a famous doctor or merchant. Once under the water this particular specimen had begun by nervously rubbing his hands and face in order to get the soap off, and when shouted at and abused for that had then turned his attention to one other spot – the back of his left forearm.

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Mine host seemed enraged. “Well, well!” he exclaimed irascibly, watching him as might a hawk. “Are you going to spend all day rubbing that one spot? For God’s sake, don’t you know enough to rub your whole body and get out from under the water? Move! Move! Rub your chest! Rub your belly! Hell, rub your back! Rub your toes and get out!”

When routed from the ludicrous effort of vigorously rubbing one spot he was continually being driven on to some other, as though his body were some vast complex machine which he had never rightly understood before. He was very much flustered of course and seemed wholly unable to grasp how it was done, let alone please his exacting host.

“Come on!” insisted the latter finally and wearily. “Get out from under the water. A lot you know about washing yourself! For a man who has been on the bench for fifteen years you’re the dullest person I ever met. If you bathe like that at home, how do you keep clean? Come on out and dry yourself!”

The distinguished victim, drying himself rather ruefully on an exceedingly rough towel, looked a little weary and disgusted. “Such language!” some one afterwards said he said to some one else. “He’s not used to dealing with gentlemen, that’s plain. The man talks like a blackguard. And to think we pay for such things! Well, well! I’ll not stand it, I’m afraid. I’ve had about enough. It’s positively revolting, positively revolting!” But he stayed on, just the same – second thoughts, a good breakfast, his own physical needs. At any rate weeks later he was still there and in much better shape physically if not mentally.

About the second or third day I witnessed another such spectacle, which made me laugh – only not in my host’s presence – nay, verily! For into this same chamber had come

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another distinguished personage, a lawyer or society man, I couldn’t tell which, who was washing himself rather leisurely, as was not the prescribed way, when suddenly he was spied by mine host, who was invariably instructing some one in this swift one-minute or less system. Now he eyed the operation narrowly for a few seconds, then came over and exclaimed:

“Wash your toes, can’t you? Wash your toes! Can’t you wash your toes?”

The skilled gentleman, realizing that he was now living under very different conditions from those to which presumably he was accustomed, reached down and began to rub the tops of his toes but without any desire apparently to widen the operation.

“Here!” called the host, this time much more sharply, “I said wash your toes, not the outside of them! Soap them! Don’t you know how to wash your toes yet? You’re old enough, God knows! Wash between ‘em! Wash under ‘em!”

“Certainly I know how to wash my toes,” replied the other irritably and straightening up, “and what’s more, I’d like you to know that I am a gentleman.”

“Well, then, if you’re a gentleman,” retorted the other, “you ought to know how to wash your toes. Wash ‘em – and don’t talk back!”

“Pah!” exclaimed the bather now, looking twice as ridiculous as before. “I’m not used to having such language addressed to me.”

“I can’t help that,” said Culhane. “If you knew how to wash your toes perhaps you wouldn’t have to have such language addressed to you.”

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